“I shall have no lover.  I shall make it the aim and study of all my future life to love only God, mother, and you.  My hope of happiness centres in the one word Home!  We all three have felt the bitter want of one, and I desire to make ours that serene, holy ideal Home of which I have so long dreamed:  ’We will bear our Penates with us; their atrium, the heart.  Our household gods are the memories of our childhood, the recollections of the hearth round which we gathered; of the fostering hands which caressed us, of the scene of all the joys, anxieties, and hopes, the ineffable yearnings of love, which made us first acquainted with the mystery and the sanctity of home.’  Such a home, dear uncle, let us fashion, somewhere in sight of the blue Pacific; and into its sacred rest no lover shall come.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Mrs. Orme had carefully instructed Mrs. Waul concerning the details of her daughter’s toilette, and selected certain articles which she desired her to wear; but Regina saw her mother no more that day, and late in the afternoon, when she knocked at the door, soliciting admission, for a moment only, the mother answered from within: 

“No; my child would only unnerve me now, and there is too much at stake.  Uncle Orme understands all that I wish done to-night.”

Regina heard the quick restless tread across the floor, betraying the extreme agitation that prevailed in her mind and heart; and sorrowfully the girl went back to her uncle, in whose society she daily found increasing balm and comfort.

The theatre was crowded when Mr. Chesley and Regina entered their box; and though the latter had several times attended the opera in New York, the elegance and brilliance of the surrounding scene surpassed all that she had hitherto witnessed.  Mrs. Orme had created a profound impression by her earlier roles at this theatre, and the sudden termination of her engagement by the illness that succeeded her extraordinarily pathetic and touching “Katherine,” had aroused much sympathy, stimulated curiosity and interest; consequently her reappearance in a new play, of whose plot no hint had yet been made public, sufficed to fill the house at an early hour.

Soon after their entrance, Mr. Chesley laid his hand on his companion’s and whispered: 

“Will you promise to be very calm and self-controlled, if I show you your father?”

He felt her hand grow cold, and in reply she merely pressed his fingers.

“When I hold the curtain slightly aside, look into the second box immediately opposite, where two gentlemen are sitting.  They are your father and grandfather.”

She leaned and looked, and how eagerly, how yearningly her eyes dwelt upon the handsome face which still closely resembled the Cuthbert of college days, and the ambrotype she had studied so carefully since her arrival in Paris.